Cold
by Rphoenix
Summary: Heero and Quatre consider outer space. Spoilers through episode 25


I came to with cool water flowing down my throat. My swallowing reflex continues to operate while I'm unconscious— a modification that Dr. J. was proud of to a degree disproportionate to its actual usefulness. It was supposed to allow me to survive long enough for my body to heal itself when there's no medical equipment available but there is someone around who needs me for another mission. To my knowledge, this was the first time it's ever been tested under field conditions. When Trowa took care of me after I self-detonated Wing, he had no idea of this and simply stole an IV rig and fluids from a hospital.

"I know you're awake, Heero."

Apparently its major effect was to make people think I'm conscious when I'm not, because I knew I hadn't moved in any other way, or even altered my breathing or pulse rate.

"I'm not sure exactly what emotion that was, but I felt you feel it. Open your eyes."

I wasn't strong enough to kill him and I didn't want to talk to him, but the conversation was already happening whether I participated or not. I opened my eyes. Quatre was holding me beneath the battered hulk of Mercurius, which was unsurprisingly no longer space-worthy. Sweat had beaded on my hair and was dripping into my eyes. I blinked to clear them. Quatre gently smoothed my hair back from my forehead.

"Feeling better?" he inquired, in the same soft, sad voice he'd used to inform us that outer space had gone mad.

"Are you?"

"Never mind me. You need to take Wing Zero to rescue Trowa. Can you stand?"

I ran a quick diagnostic: concussion, shock, internal bleeding, cracked ribs, broken collarbone… I didn't bother finishing it. "No, I can't. You go."

Most people become uncomfortable with silence within quite a brief period of time. Duo, for instance, will rush in to fill a gap of anything more than five seconds. I don't feel this discomfort. I don't think Trowa does either; it made his company very restful.

For a full three minutes, there was no sound but Quatre's slow, even breathing.

"Quatre, go!" My voice was too loud; it hurt my ears. "He needs help, I don't."

There was another long pause. I failed to track this one, probably because of the concussion.

"I can't get into that thing," he said at last.

"Why not? You piloted it before." _And destroyed the wrong targets with brilliant success_, I didn't add.

"It talks to you."

"…Yes?" I had thought that I was unusual among Gundam pilots in that Wing didn't talk to me, nor I to it. Duo spoke to Deathscythe, though I wasn't sure if it replied. I know that Heavyarms conveyed messages to Trowa. It hadn't to me, but then I wasn't its pilot.

"Not like Sandrock. It made me think I'd never truly heard the soul of outer space before… That the voice I thought I knew was only my own mind..." His voice turned brisk. "But you never heard that in the first place, so you should be fine. I'll carry you to it. All you have to do is pilot it."

"Quatre, I can't. I couldn't hold the controls. Give me a few hours to rest, then I'll go out. If Trowa bailed out, he's got eight hours of oxygen. We've got time."

"It's not good to drift too long in deep space." He shifted me in his arms, pulling me a little tighter into his chest. Between his suit and my suit, I couldn't feel any warmth, not even when he bent his head to lay his cheek against mine. "It can be very… persuasive."

I had never before been so glad to see a shuttle land and ten soldiers jump out and surround us with weapons drawn. But my relief lasted for the two minutes it took to establish that a coup had taken place, we were both under arrest, none of them cared that OZ Officer Barton was lost in space, and no one was going out to look for him. I tried to get up, and fell hard. Quatre tried to grab a gun. It took six of them to pin him down. He started to scream, or maybe laugh, and didn't stop until one of them knocked him out with the butt of his gun.

They didn't bother cuffing me, just strapped me in and tilted my seat until I was lying almost flat. One of them covered me with his jacket and told me I'd be in the infirmary within twenty minutes. I ran another diagnostic, which told me again what I already knew: I wouldn't be able to fight for hours yet. And once this faction's military doctors got a look at me, they'd be unlikely to leave me unsecured.

I had a perfect view out the windows from where I lay. It was true that people who drifted too long in deep space tended not to return to the jobs that had put them there, even after intensive therapy. In the colonies we see space as the enemy that waits outside our thin metal shells, to steal our breath and freeze our blood. If Quatre thought it was talking to him, no wonder he'd gone mad.

I'd heard that on Earth, where the gravity is high, even people who don't want to die sometimes feel an urge to jump when they stand near a high edge. Here we stare out into the vacuum, and sometimes it does seem to call to us. Then we think of opening the airlock or taking off our helmets. It would be quick. It would be certain. I don't notice pain much anyway.

But Trowa was a Gundam pilot. He could jump off a motorcycle and come to rest on a clothesline. He could persuade his worst enemy that he was her most trusted pilot. He could take life, and he could save it. This stretch of space looked empty from where I lay, but it was packed with research ships, military ships, commercial ships, private ships, and colonies. He didn't need my help to land on his feet. If I survived long enough to see it, he'd turn up, maybe deep undercover as the second-in-command of whatever this faction was.

I stared out the windows at the black and white. For once, it didn't call to me.


End file.
